GAO finds fault with federal fire management leadership

Federal land management agencies need to band together to develop a framework that will ensure the effective use of billions of dollars earmarked over the past two years for wildland fire prevention, according to a new General Accounting Office study. The 2000 fire season burned through 8.4 million acres of land and sparked debate in Congress about federal fire prevention. When the debate concluded, legislators more than doubled the annual firefighting appropriation in fiscal 2001 to $2.9 billion for the five federal land management agencies--the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service. At the same time, the five agencies developed a national fire plan, which advocates new ways to prevent wildland fires, and revised the 1995 federal wildland fire management policy. But according to GAO's report, "Severe Wildland Fires: Leadership and Accountability Needed to Reduce Risks to Communities and Resources," (GAO-02-259) more than a year has passed since the funds were appropriated and the wildland fire prevention effort still lacks focus and leadership. "Authority and responsibility remain fragmented among the Interior Department, the Forest Service and the states," GAO found. "A sound framework to ensure that funds appropriated to reduce hazardous fuels are spent in an efficient, effective and timely manner is needed." Land agencies commonly refer to the hazardous vegetation that fuels fires as "hazardous fuels." The national fire plan directs these agencies to focus on reducing such hazardous vegetation by establishing criteria for assessing communities that are most at risk from severe wildland fires, establishing outcome-oriented goals and performance measures, and creating a long-term strategy and generating annual reports on its results. To date, none of the agencies has initiated research to help in identifying at-risk communities, GAO found. And although the national fire plan calls for the formation of an interagency council to provide strategic direction, no council currently exists. To move toward success in federal wildland prevention, GAO recommended that Congress immediately direct the secretaries of Interior and Agriculture to create the long-awaited interagency council. GAO also said officials from those two departments should adopt the framework outlined in the national fire plan, begin gathering information and start measuring the performance of these agencies in reducing hazardous vegetation, GAO said. In their response to the report, the Interior and Agriculture departments generally agreed with GAO's findings, though both agencies felt their current efforts to implement the national fire plan were being ignored. "We are currently addressing many issues raised in the report and believe that the approaches that we are taking together will continue to have effective and positive results for communities and the resources," officials wrote in a joint agency response.